West and south the blue Pacific,
Hemmed with surf and fringed with spray,
Bathes in floods of molten silver
Headland, island, beach and bay;
East and north the inland deserts,
With their ever shifting sands—
More unstable than the waters—
Fade in distant mountain lands.
Oh! that vision of the sunlands
Where the skies are ever fair,
And the Autumn woos the Winter
With young rosebuds in her hair—
Where the orange blooms forever
And its leaf is never sere,
And the mocking bird is singing
To his mate the livelong year.
It has haunted me in slumber,
It has gleamed and throbbed again
In my solitary musings,
And in crowded throngs of men;
Like a vanished revelation
Floats the memory back to me
Of that dawn upon the mountain
'Twixt the desert and the sea.
James G. Clark.
Mount San Antonio, July 4, 1895,
As Seen from Mount Lowe.
[Tri-Crested Summit of Mount Lowe.]
No photograph or engraving can give any adequate conception of the grand proportions of this majestic mountain. Seen from Los Angeles, Pasadena, or the intermediate or surrounding points, its three crests are clearly outlined against the sky, and it stands—the proud monarch of the Sierra Madre range—centrally located and immediately overlooking Pasadena and the head of the San Gabriel Valley. The bridle road of the "Mount Lowe Eight" reaches its topmost crest, where there are delightful mountain parks surrounded by live oaks, pines, firs, sycamore and other trees.
The climatic and atmospheric advantages of this site for astronomical and meteorological observations have been enthusiastically expatiated upon by such scientific experts as President Eliot and Prof. Pickering of Harvard, Profs. Barnard and Burnham of the Lick Observatory, Prof. Kent of Chicago and many others. No more suitable site could be selected in the whole domain of the American continent.